President Joe Biden’s first year in office was a chance to make good on a lengthy list of campaign promises, with decidedly mixed results.
From COVID-19 to immigration to gun control, Biden vowed to deliver as a modern day FDR. These are the president’s biggest wins and losses of his first year in office.
WIN: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill
The idea of achieving meaningful, bipartisan infrastructure has become an inside joke over the past decade. Biden’s predecessors, former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, both tried and failed to usher their respective bills through Congress. “Infrastructure Week” under Trump, in particular, became a punchline.
Biden’s own bill was nearly defeated after centrist Democrats forced him to split his original proposal, a massive amalgamation of physical infrastructure reform and liberal social programs, into two, but the president was able to use experience learned from four decades of Senate service to bring together warring members of his own party and more than a smattering of Republicans to pass something historic: $1.2 trillion in upgrades to the nation’s bridges, roads, and rail and historic investments in electric vehicles.
LOSS: Build Back Better Social Spending Bill
While Biden’s physical infrastructure bill benefited from being split off from his initial proposal, his social spending plan certainly did not and is in serious danger of dying in 2022.
Fiscal concerns from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — and, to a lesser extent, fellow Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — prevented Biden and Senate Majority Chuck Schumer from passing the bill with a simple majority vote. That tension hit a boiling point the week before Christmas, when Manchin finally declared that he will not vote for Biden’s plan in its current form. Biden claimed in the following days that he is still looking to woo Manchin to his side, but failing to secure the vote of his full caucus for his signature project could spell doom for the party, and his presidency, in the 2022 and 2024 elections.
WIN: The Pre-Delta Variant Fight Against COVID-19
Biden won voters whose top issue was battling the pandemic by 66 points and those who prioritized containing the virus over reopening the economy by 60 points, according to exit polls. Once in office, the issue initially drove his highest job approval ratings.
As the vaccine rollout accelerated, those numbers went up. The country’s at-risk population has been nearly totally vaccinated, while more than half of the entire population over the age of 5 has also received their first two doses of COVID vaccines. The administration additionally implemented a complex, nationwide testing system to mitigate community spread. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration is preparing to approve multiple therapeutic treatments for use in severe cases that will certainly lower the mortality rate of COVID.
LOSS: The Post-Delta Variant Fight Against COVID-19, So Far
Politics is a fickle mistress. Progress toward vaccination stalled as the months wore on, and Biden was unable to cut into vaccine hesitancy, leading to a pre-Christmas speech warning of illness and death.
As the delta variant, and later omicron, raged, the public began to doubt whether Biden had the virus under control after all. Combined with the flip-flopped messaging on masking, schools, and how much the vaccinated could return to normal life over the past year, Biden’s approvals have plummeted, even on this issue.
WIN: Shoring Up Supply Chain Deficiencies
The pandemic helped spark a shipping and supply disaster, and while supply chain issues primarily remain a private sector issue, the administration has rolled out a number of initiatives many believe will help.
After ports on both coasts experienced historic backlogs resulting in nationwide shipping delays, the president installed Jim Porcari as an official White House port envoy, secured commitments from unions to operate on 24/7 unloading shifts, and convinced private sector partners to ship goods inland on the same schedule. Furthermore, in addition to the billions allocated for road and rail upgrades in the bipartisan infrastructure law, the president designated dozens of ports and rail yards for automated upgrades and expansions. It seems odd that “gifts arrive in time for Christmas” is a reason to celebrate, but Biden’s actions mark significant progress toward fixing the country’s supply chain problems in the short and long term future.
LOSS: ‘Transitory’ Inflation
At this point, it’s no secret: the price of all commercial goods has skyrocketed in 2021.
It’s true that rising prices were caused by a number of factors, some of which were impossible for the administration to control. However, the Biden administration claimed for months that those factors, whether they were pent up demand or supply shortages caused by COVID shutdowns overseas, were “transitory” and would go away on their own. Roughly two-thirds of the way through the year, Biden and top officials totally abandoned that claim. The rise of the delta and omicron COVID variants only exacerbated price spikes, and all signs point to the current inflationary wave, the worst since the Carter administration, sticking around for the majority of Biden’s current term in office, imperiling his spending agenda.
WIN: Refocusing On Climate
‘Going green’ has arguably been Biden’s most consistent policy focus as president. Given his rhetoric on the campaign trail, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Biden’s team has held multiple climate summits with key allies from the global community, both virtually from the White House and across the Atlantic. What does raise eyebrows, however, are the green commitments Biden secured from India and China, which along with the United States, are by far the world’s biggest contributors to pollution. Some climate activists claim that these actions are symbolic and don’t go far enough, but they go beyond the Obama administration.
Biden said he was going to put climate at the core of every issue.
LOSS: Immigration
Biden vowed on the campaign trail to reverse the Trump administration’s broad immigration policies, which he often called cruel and inhumane. Doing so led to a historic, nonstop surge of illegal migration at the southern border.
Not only did the situation give plenty of ammo to Republicans, it also mired Vice President Kamala Harris in her first of several policy predicaments over the past year. Northern migration has become such a problem over 2021 that Biden himself ended the year by relaunching and retooling a number of Trump-era immigration policies, including the “Remain in Mexico” program and reforms to H-1B visa services.
LOSS: Afghanistan
Biden originally said the scenes from the Kabul airport would not resemble evacuations from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. Later he said it would have been impossible to have “gotten out without anybody being hurt.”
An ISIS-K attack left 13 U.S. service members dead. The State Department later estimated that a majority of our Afghan allies were left behind, as well as hundreds of Americans. The Taliban quickly took over the country.
The debacle coincided with the drop in Biden’s approval ratings.
